


Counterclockwise, The Miscellaneous Archive

by jacksgreysays (jacksgreyson)



Series: Original Work [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen, Immortality, Magic, Shapeshifters - Freeform, Superheroes, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2018-11-21 21:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 12,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11365782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacksgreyson/pseuds/jacksgreysays
Summary: (The collection of loosely related snippets and ficlets set in the Counterclockwise 'verse, which is mostly set in Cadmium City. Originally posted on tumblr.)





	1. (2015-02-15) ficlet

We know each other. Or at the very least we know of each other. It’s not like we’re part of a special club, go to a bar every Tuesday night, give birthday cards or gifts to each other. For one, considering who we are, that either would be very expensive or very confusing. For another, we don’t all like each other. I mean, if time allowed it, some of us would hate each other’s guts. But you can’t live for so long and not appreciate someone else who sticks around as long as you do. Or, alternatively, pops up every now and again and just knows who you are and what you’ve done… and what you will do.

True, the doctor and Jack have some strange kind of eternal awkward acquaintance thing going on. At one point they had a mutual friend, back when they were mortal, but some sort of drama went down and now it’s just the two of them for the rest of their eternal lives.

Then there’s Bastian, who, if I’m going to be honest, I don’t think is all there. For all that his kind are meant to be both magical and long-lived, that spell he’s under… or rather, curse if you ask him, is pushing it rather a lot. There’s a difference between a two century lifespan amongst others with the same longevity and a millennium of being the only one around.

Then Nyx and Michael and Azrael well, they have duties which put them above humanity so they’re actually designed for immortality. Though the next generation is going to be a real doozy from what I’ve been hearing.

As for me? Well, I’m only twenty three, and at the rate I’m going, I’m unlikely to hit thirty. But thanks to this stupid malfunctioning pocket watch I’ve played the doctor and Jack’s go-between for centuries, I’ve walked alongside Bastian throughout the millennium, and I have been pulled into more arguments of which angelic or demonic department is better than a priest could handle and still be sane.

I haven’t been back to my timeline in five years–five years for me, anyway. I miss it. I want to go back, but I can’t. And if you ever read these… I hope you know that I’m sorry. I’m still mad that you doubted me, but I understand why you did. I’m mad that you think I’d go evil so easily, but I am sorry for abandoning you during that last battle. It’s not like I had much of a choice, but I’m still sorry.


	2. (2015-09-01) ficlet

“This is our secret,” he says, within the small unmonitored room of the bank, where customers can check the contents of their safety deposit boxes in privacy. “This was my mother’s legacy to me, and now my legacy to you.”

You look inside. The box under his name–now your name, too–is a small one but it is held deep within the bank’s vault. Old, rare. It marks you and your father as elite patrons of the bank, before the more acceptable term ‘premium members’ began being used. Despite the paltry sums of money in your actual bank accounts.

Inside the old metal box is yet another box, a wooden one, the varnish has worn away from age. The area around the latch is a different color, the oil of generations worth of hands opening and closing the box. Within the wooden box, the inside lined with a red velvet similarly faded away with time, is a pocket watch.

You don’t know much about pocket watches, but this one looks unremarkable to your eyes. The front cover is metal, a simple repeating pattern of swirls etched into it. At your father’s nod, you reach in, pick the watch up, and open it. The numbers are roman numerals, but other than that it looks like any watch you can buy from anywhere. No gems or intricate designs, no additional smaller clocks within the face. The chain, too, is simple.

This is not a very impressive inheritance, you don’t say, but your expression must give away your skepticism. Your father laughs, amused, not offended at all.

“In time, you will see,” he says, clapping a hand to your shoulder, before gesturing back to the box, prompting you to return the watch to its place of rest.

It’s not impressive, but you are careful with it, nonetheless, laying it gently within the circular indentation of the velvet cushion. The chain you wind slowly around in a short spiral, before closing the lids of the wooden box then the metal box.

“That’s it?” You ask your father, as the both of you leave the privacy booth, as he waves down the banker who will help you return the safety deposit box to the vault.

He presses the key into your hand, “That’s it for now,” he responds mildly.

Two years later, you will finally understand what he meant.


	3. (2015-10-31) ficlet

Bastian has the temerity to let her try and fail five times before he says, “A time witch who can’t do time magic? That’s pathetic.”

Leanne, fed up with the blonde creep and his completely unhelpful and unnecessary comments, throws a rock at him. Annoyingly enough, he dodges, but she wasn’t actually expecting it to hit him anyway.

“I’m not a time witch,” she says through gritted teeth, because it’s true and she hates having to explain it to herself. In the day and age that she’s found herself in, they don’t have the vocabulary to explain what she is and how that differs from what they do know. As far as they’re concerned, she can do strange things, and so she is a witch. That her strange things involve time makes her, specifically, a time witch. But she’s not; she’s a meta-human with time based powers.

Actually, to be technically honest, she’s a meta-human with hair that photosynthesizes. Her time powers don’t originate from her, but from the pocket watch she inherited from her father.

The pocket watch that is, of course, broken.

After failure number six, Leanne pushes herself away from the spell components arranged on the ground, stomps over to Bastian, and grudgingly sits next to him on the canvas.

They sit in silence for a few minutes before Bastian, with the slightest hint of apology in his tone, says, “Time magic isn’t my specialty, either.”

And it’s still not right. It doesn’t make everything okay. They are both still stuck in this century that fears and hates magic, with all of the problems but none of the benefits of having it. Worse, they are stuck with each other until they can each find their way home.

But she’d rather be stuck with Bastian, a complete tool who can barely say three sentences without some kind of insult, than be by herself. Because for all that he’s a jerk, she at least knows that he won’t let her get captured by the witch hunters and executed.

At least, not unless he’s been captured, too.


	4. (2016-02-10) ficlet

“I’ll come back for you,” Leanne promises, hand gripping his as tightly as she can, even as her body begins to fade into nonexistence.

“No you won’t,” Bastian refutes, but he says it kindly. The small, sad smile on his face is the last thing she ever sees of him, the panicked fear in her eyes the last he sees of her.

At least for another century, that is.

Next time he meets her is the first time she meets him, and the lack of recognition would almost feel like betrayal if he weren’t already in the midst of trying to kill her teammates.


	5. Word Prompt (J8): Judgment

In the middle of battle, Leanne runs and lives to fight another day. A strategic retreat, she’ll explain to her team, though no doubt they’ll hold it against her. Just one more failing in a long list of them.

Coward, Thunderbolt is fond of spitting in her direction.

Amateur, Starling will note in a far more objective tone.

Weak and distant and always falling behind.

Even Zenith, who doesn’t view her presence as a total eyesore, will say, “Not everyone is cut out for this. Civilians,” he’ll finish with a shrug, as if that explains it.

And maybe it does.

Because Leanne is a civilian. Or she was one up until a few months ago. She wasn’t born into this like Caleb, wasn’t trained for it like Henry, doesn’t have an endless well of power sparking at her fingertips like Tetsuki.

She’s just a girl who inherited a pocket watch that doesn’t tell time.

—

For the first eight years of her life, Leanne lived with her grandparents. Not too unusual, she supposes, except that she has siblings. Two of them, in fact, one on either side of her in age. But both of them lived with her mother during that span of time. And while Leanne did join them eventually–both of her grandparents passing away–it’s something that marks her as… different.

Eight years is not so much, in comparison to a person’s total lifespan, but that first bit is enough. Victor and Faye are much closer to each other than they ever were with her, their mother falls silent when it comes to the matter of Leanne’s baby stories.

Even in her own family she is an outsider.

Perhaps she gets that from her father–forever a wanderer; a fleeting, intangible presence in her life, even when she lived with his parents. He’s the one who gave her the watch, even though Victor is the oldest.

He’s the one that doomed her to this fate.

—

Leanne is nearly seventeen when she gets a visitor. A strange visitor.

Doctor Ellen Kaiza is not so much a celebrity as she is an urban myth, name so ingrained with the meta-human movement that it might as well be synonymous.

What the hell is she doing here?

Leanne isn’t a meta-human, not as the doctors classify it, anyway. Green, photosynthesizing hair might have counted fifty years ago, but not anymore. If that counted, Kaiza wouldn’t be here for Leanne. Not when Victor can actually boost plant growth, or Faye can occasionally harden her skin into tree bark, and both of them with the same hair as her. But even then, technically, neither of them count as meta-human either.

Leanne’s maternal grandmother did–a combination of powers that were stronger in a time when the requirements were lower–but that’s not what Kaiza is here for. Who Kaiza is here for.

No, this is about Leanne’s paternal grandmother–more specifically, Leanne’s broken pocket watch that she inherited from her father, who inherited it from her paternal grandmother.

The broken pocket watch made for Leanne decades ago, before she or her father were even born.

—

In the middle of battle, Leanne runs and lives to fight another day.

Except when Leanne runs, she goes farther than just one day. She runs into another year, another decade, another century. She runs backwards and forwards, jumps back and forth, unable to control when or where she lands.

Her pocket watch isn’t supposed to be able to do that. She figured it out, slowly but surely, but there are rules to it. One hour–that’s it–she can change one hour per day. Undo it, rewind it, relive it, tweak it. It’s not supposed to do this.

Or at least, she thought, it wasn’t supposed to do this. It’s been broken for a long time. What does time mean to someone like her?

In the middle of a battle, Leanne runs.

She never stops running.


	6. Word Prompts (O15): Origin

The public is, in general, rather accepting of this new vigilante team. Cadmium City has long since been protected by superheroes–the consequences of also having so many super powered criminals–and this new team is, if not the same, then similar.

It’s not a secret that Zenith is the son of Apex, or Starling the apprentice of Firefly. And while Thunderbolt’s powers are nothing like her aunt’s, and Goldheart is very obviously a lion not a wolf shapeshifter, these are familiar to the citizens of Cadmium. Understandable.

The fifth member of the team is… less so.

For one, the media can’t really seem to figure out what her power is, or even agree on whether or not it’s powers at all. A speedster, maybe, or a teleporter? But obviously not a very skilled one, or one with a very limited scope. In which case, why would she be on the team at all?

She might be a regular baseline human with some kind of gadget. But if it were a device, then surely it’d be of better use with Starling–with someone better trained–her fighting is amateurish when she’s not pulling whatever trick she does, and frankly, almost embarrassing.

Also, she doesn’t have a name. A name would help–either in figuring out what her abilities are, or even to organize public opinion. Trying to report on the team’s heroics for the day while referring to one of the members as “the green haired one” or “the other girl” is unprofessional.

No one is sure how exactly she joined the team. Or why.

—

It’s not that Leanne isn’t serious about being part of the team–it’s both dangerous and important work that they do, stepping in whenever the police force is overwhelmed (although, that happens less often than it did in decades passed, now that the department is hiring more meta-humans)–it’s just that, unlike her teammates, it isn’t her life.

There’s a very distinct line drawn between her life as Leanne and her life as… whoever she is on the team. Not distinct as in secret–her family knows what she does–but distinct as compartmentalized. It’s as if being a vigilante is just an extracurricular activity. Like volunteering for extreme community service.

But that’s all it is to her. She’ll answer the call, put on her ridiculous costume, and go out and save the day, but as soon as she comes home it’s back into normal clothes. No more mask on her face. Even though she carries the watch with her everywhere, she doesn’t do the same with the job.

The watch came first–a family heirloom, a promise, a gift–the job is just an opportunity for her to use it.

—

After her first real fight, Leanne spends a week trying to hide an absolutely hideous bruise on her face with make up. Unfortunately, she is terrible with make up and, moreover, has to borrow some from her sister. Faye not only has a different skin tone than Leanne, she also has a sharp eye.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Faye says, while Leanne fumbles with all the brushes and containers and it’s just ridiculous. The sound of plastic against the sink countertop echoes maddeningly against the tile.

“People at school already know you’ve been hit in the face,” she adds, and suddenly Leanne is worried that everyone at school knows she’s a super hero and what’s even the point of wearing a mask if it’s not going to protect her face or her identity?

“Relax,” Faye says, gently turning her sister’s face so she can apply foundation properly, “Mostly people think you walked into a sign post or something. Of course, others think maybe you’ve gotten into a shitty relationship.”

“Well, I kind of did,” Leanne finally says, because being on the team is a little like dating four overpowered adrenaline junkies who have convinced her to join their dangerous hobbies.

She doesn’t know why Dr Kaiza didn’t choose Faye–Faye who would probably be able to keep up with everyone else and wouldn’t end up with stupid bruises on her face.

“Hey, no crying,” Faye murmurs, wiping away tears before it reaches her hard work, “It’s only the first week, you’ll do better,”

Leanne cries harder. It’s an ugly thing, sloppy, she’s babbling on and on about how she’s useless. She didn’t do anything in the fight but get caught off guard and punched in the face. The robber actually looked surprised when she fell, as if he wasn’t actually expecting to succeed.

He didn’t, of course, but only because less than a second later, a lion rammed into him full weight, top speed.

“What am I even doing?” Leanne blubbers to her sister, sitting on the toilet lid and weeping her eyes out.

“You don’t have to do this,” Faye says, unsure, but offering nonetheless, “Kaiza doesn’t own you. If you don’t want to do it anymore, she can’t make you.”

Leanne is silent.

“But if you do want to do this, I’ll help you,” Faye says, “and so will Victor. You’re not alone.”

This is one of the moments Leanne will carry with her when she’s years and decades and even centuries away from everyone she loves.


	7. Word Prompts (Q2): Queen

Once, when she had truly been a child, she wanted to be a queen. Not a princess, no, for princesses were often portrayed damsels in distress with crowns but no wits. They were passive and pretty and pleasant, and those were not things she had ever wanted to be.

But a queen? Queens, whether good or evil, they acted. They were rulers of nations. They made decisions and sometimes they failed but sometimes they succeeded, and regardless of the results queens could change the world.

Once, she had wanted to be a queen.

Now she is an empress over all of time.

She does not want that anymore.

—

There are people, a rare few, that she sees as more than simply fleeting sparks. Those who are cursed to live forever, those who she always returns to, but there is only one who is a constant companion.

And he’s an asshole.

Officer Sheridan begins reading her rights which is all he ever says to her, “You’re under arrest for the crimes of illegal time travel and…”

His equipment is newer–machines backed by actual computers calibrated to make every jump perfect–made centuries after she was born.

All she has is her pocket watch, scuffed and slightly dented, made with clockwork gears decades before she was born.

She will win anyway because, somehow, she always wins.

—

Once, just once, she intersected with her own timeline.

It was not entirely an accident.

She remembers this fight, vaguely, her team against a coven of witches and their reluctant demon counterparts. Thunderbolt had experience with both and was best suited to take point and, maybe, if that had been all it was they would have succeeded.

Except Bastian crashed the party and, for reasons unknown to her then, Bastian had the worst kind of grudge against her.

She knows now, why that is–the conflict of past and present and future with him twisting and clashing within her chest–she had once promised to stay with him always before she had ever met him. In a way, it was the truth.

In a way, it was a lie.

But now, from this side of the event, she realizes what must have happened. What she must do.

She had been aiming for this time only because it has been her goal for so long even if, now, she would no longer fit. And perhaps she is a few months off, but that is closer than she has gotten in a while.

And now she must abandon it.

“Bastian!” She shouts, and for one startling moment attention is on her. She sees herself turning her head to look but she doesn’t remember seeing herself and knows that she will be gone before she can.

This Bastian is mad, an abandoned wild dog, but there is still something in him that responds to her because when he lunges at her he does not go for her throat.

She takes his hand and takes him back. Back to when neither of them could hurt anyone but each other.

She will not see this century for seven years.

—

She’s never been far enough into the future to know what being arrested by Officer Sheridan entails. Truthfully, she never even knew there were other time travelers–actual travelers, not just people left to weather through the years–until said officer tried to arrest her.

She may have been the weakest of her team, but that did not mean she could not fight.

Of course, that only added to her list charges, but what does she care?

If she cannot be tethered to the present by her own will, how could any prison do the same?


	8. (2016-03-22) ficlet

He doesn’t know if the dead are watching him or if people simply cease to be when they die. Depending on his mood, his preference changes. He has a lot of dead to be watched by, after all; that’s what happens when you outlive everyone you love.

Sometimes he finds comfort in it–in imagining his family continuing on even after they’ve passed. Living somehow through him, his unseen shadows. Sometimes it pisses him off. That the dead would dare to haunt him, lingering where they’re not wanted. What right do they have to judge him? He is doing his best to survive a situation they’ve forced on him.

He hopes his father is ridden with guilt and his mother heart broken; he wishes his sister could see the disaster she wrought.

But, other times, he thinks it’d be best if the dead were no longer there.

“Look away,” Bastian says, to those who may not even exist, “Don’t watch,” he warns them before he sets the building on fire. There is no one inside, but it will be big enough that the heroes of the city will be called to help.

He wants to see Leanne again.

“Let me go.”

—

She doesn’t attend her brother’s wedding intentionally, but it is a good accident; one she wishes she had more of.

Her watch spits her out in a time that feels almost familiar to her. Close to when she would be if time travel never existed, but not exact enough for her to feel equilibrium. If she were ten years older, this would be perfect.

A church, decorated in white, flowers lining every door and stair rail. Too cold to be Easter, though, not festive enough for Christmas. Her guess is confirmed when a woman in a pantsuit and headset spots her and immediately begins rattling off details about seating arrangements and ushers.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Leanne says, if only to stop the flood of words.

The wedding planner, for surely that is who this woman is, blinks then startles. Then smiles, wide and fake, “My apologies, I thought you were the maid of honor. You must be one of the out of town cousins–you’re a few hours early.”

“Sorry,” Leanne says with a smile of her own, “I’m absolutely terrible with time zones.”

“Not a problem,” the wedding planner says, unaware of how much a problem it really is, “We can let you into the church early, if you don’t mind waiting. Family is always welcome.”

This, at least, Leanne hopes is true.

The decorations continue even inside the church, a trail of white flowers leading the way. The pots are discretely hidden away, and it occurs to her that maybe all of these flowers are still alive.

Well, if it’s Victor getting married, that makes sense. He’d never want cut flowers.

Leanne hears the susurration of voices down the hall–maybe the wedding party getting ready–she walks the other way. She’s not ready to meet her siblings again, or worse, meet someone who doesn’t know she’s their sister. If she doesn’t talk to anyone else, then she can be an observer still–a ghost in her own life.

When other guests begin to trickle in, Leanne takes a seat in the back. It puts her in the perfect spot to see the groom. The other groom.

“Caleb?”

—

Bastian has never met anyone with time powers before Leanne. She is the first and somehow, despite herself, the best.

As the years slip by, Bastian meets other time travelers. Including that absolute waste of atoms Sheridan, but none of them are like Leanne.

He is biased yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Whatever is behind Leanne’s ability, the source of power behind that damned finicky pocket watch, it’s much stronger than whatever the other time travelers are using. It’s almost as if they need a constant power source to exist in a different time, whereas Leanne simply steps between eras.

Maybe one day Bastian will ask a time traveler about the mechanics–though they all seem wary of him. He knows they are from the future, he wonders what kind of reputation he has then.

No matter, he’ll live to hear it himself.


	9. (2016-03-23) ficlet

In a different life, maybe this would be easier. Maybe she wouldn’t have to ignore his crimes and maybe he would forgive her frequent departures. Maybe they wouldn’t be so hurt, their relationship a double edged blade.

But in a different life, they likely would never have met. Him dead millennia before she is born, no cursed pocket watch bridging the gap in between.

“I do love you,” she says as a sigh, as a confession, before pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. His face, cradled between her hands, goes where she leads. Pliant in a way he himself is not.

“I have always loved you,” he says back, breathing against her cheek, “You would have been my princess.”

Leanne can’t help the laugh tearing out of her throat, “You were a brat, then, I highly doubt that.”

Bastian jerks, dislodging from her hold; the fragile peace surrounding the moment shattered into dangerous shards. Accusingly, he asks, “You were that far back?”

“Once,” she says, pulling away, resigned to telling this story, “just once.”

—

She had only been then for a few hours, a sudden stumble that sent her further back than she’d ever been before. So far back, in fact, that she had no idea what was going on.

A palace and people in strange clothes speaking a language so far removed from what she she could understand, all staring at her sudden appearance.

Until a set of guards tackled her to the ground. She was lucky she didn’t break a rib under the weight of four armored soldiers. As it was, she did hit her head against the marble and black out immediately.

—

During his lonelier, more lucid moments, Bastian thinks about possibilities. About the past. About how, if he weren’t cursed to live on, he would have died alongside his family.

He thinks maybe there would have been honor in that. To have fallen and been preserved in that moment as a prince.

Better than languishing and festering into whatever he’s become.

But Leanne loves him, even if she doesn’t always like him, and that’s not something he could ever regret.

—

She woke up in what may have been a infirmary of sorts, though it was unlike the hospitals she knew. If anything, it looked like a high end spa. Open and airy, beds lined up like lounge chairs beside a pool.

The doctor, upon seeing her awake, said something to her, but she still did not understand and didn’t care to. Not when she couldn’t find her watch.

“Where is it?” she asks, a twisting barbed wire of confusion and panic wrapping around her heart, “Where is my watch?”

Since inheriting it from her father, since it claimed her as its own, Leanne has never been separated from her pocket watch.

She doesn’t know what will happen if she’s not holding it when it triggers: if it won’t activate without her there, or if it will simply leave her behind. Or if, somehow, the physical watch no longer means anything, if all along the source of the time traveling has been her.

The thought is too horrific to be true. She needs her watch back now.

—

Bastian is the oldest human in existence. He’s met beings who are older–creatures that various mythologies would describe as spirits or angels or gods–but they are inhuman despite their appearances. They do not count.

Bastian also has had the honor of meeting Doctor Kaiza, had the pleasure of laughing at her paltry two centuries of extended life. He’s seen ten times that and will likely see another. He has yet to meet Doctor Kaiza’s counterpart, the estranged Professor Greyson, but it’s only a matter of time. Even their brief existences are better than the mayfly lives of normal humans.

He’s a hypocrite, of course, because what is Leanne but a mere blink of an eye in comparison to him. No matter how frequently she pops in and out of his life, she will only last a short while. But god, he loves her so much.

—

Even with a possible concussion and bruised ribs, Leanne could knock out an unprepared doctor and escape an unsecured infirmary. Her team may have been allies with Cadmium PD, but vigilantes were always outlaws. In order to catch criminals they had to be criminals.

And also, Leanne had been practicing her right hook.

The palace was huge and unfamiliar, but the layout was simple enough to guess. And her watch had always had a hold on her, she could feel its call anywhere.

No one was looking for her but given her appearance she’s a fairly obvious outsider. She’d have to be careful otherwise her ribs might actually break.

Onward, onward, her watch called and onward, onward she went. Until she ended up at a wall; luckily, one with a window low enough for her to reach and climb through.

But the climbing ended up not being necessary because the watch came to the window. Or, rather, the watch was brought to the window instead.

The face was smaller than she was used to, hands chubby with baby fat, and when he smiled she saw two gaps where teeth should be. But it was a face she knew, nonetheless, and she couldn’t help a matching–if bewildered–smile.

“Bastian!” She called out, surprised but pleased, “Give me back my watch,” she said with an outstretched hand, ready to catch.

But Bastian didn’t know her, not yet, and besides his name he had no idea what she said. The watch stayed in his hands.

“Bastian!” she called out again, frustrated, and this time he walked away.

A strange woman climbing into the window of the prince’s room is a very suspicious thing indeed. Especially when that prince is only six years old.

Leanne is stabbed through the shoulder by a guard, but the commotion startled Bastian into dropping the watch. It’s in her hands before it hit the ground, just in time to disappear.

She better end up somewhen with phenomenal healthcare.


	10. (2016-04-04) ficlet

“Fly straight, fly true,” Bastian murmurs, before pulling the trigger. It is not quite the same–the differences in technology, between bullets and arrows–and he’s not actually invoking any magic. But it is a habit, or maybe a superstition, and the bullet does its job.

Bastian doesn’t know what the man did to get a hit called out on him, but easy money is easy money. And even though Bastian can never die, he’d still prefer not to starve.

Once, he was the prince of the most powerful kingdom in the world. But that was thousands of years ago: times change, the mighty fall.

Bastian stays put for two minutes more, waiting even though alarms and sirens sound off. Sometimes, when he does something she wouldn’t approve of, Leanne appears. But she does not this time, and so he flees just seconds before the heroes of the era happen upon his vantage point.

His kingdom is not the only one who has fallen.

—

It’s strange growing up knowing that you are only the middle man. That you were born for that exact purpose.

It’s not that his parents don’t love him, not like he can’t live his own life. It’s just that, at some point in the future, he’s going to have a daughter and he’s going to give her the pocket watch that allows her to travel through time.

He met her once already, when he was just a child: a green haired woman who had looked at him and started crying with a wobbling smile. His parents had been alarmed, catching on and fearing the worst, but she had stayed silent on the matter, hugged them all farewell, and disappeared.

It’s not that he’s not worried about what that kind of reaction might mean for his future–but there’s also some good in it. He’ll have a daughter that will love him enough to cry for him; everything else he’s free to choose.


	11. (2016-04-06) ficlet

“My past few years have been kind of rough,” she responds before being seized by a fit of laughter. It’s a raucous thing, ugly and all encompassing, edging into hysterical as it stretches longer and longer, leaving her breathless and teary eyed.

Officer Sheridan looks unamused, but what does she care? It’s not as if she’s all that happy about this situation either.

—

Immediately after Leanne’s jump to the earliest in history she’s ever been, she ends up further into the future she’s ever been, too. Which is, in some respects, is lucky for her–the healthcare system can easily handle a measly stab wound.

In other respects, it’s rather unlucky.

—

Leanne wakes up with pain in her shoulders; one, due to the stab wound wrapped and recovering, the other stretched awkwardly with a set of handcuffs around her wrist to the bed. She smiles obnoxiously at Officer Sheridan and asks:

“What’s my safe word?”

—

The thing about having been a teenaged vigilante is that she never actually had to deal with the aftermath. She and her team showed up to fight the bad guys, wrapped them up for the cops, and went back to their normal non-vigilante lives.

Now she gets to see it all firsthand–albeit, from the opposite side–and can only be grateful that this way, too, she gets to sit out on the bureaucracy.

—

“You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” Officer Sheridan asks, honestly confused, perhaps even shocked. As if, for the first time in their maddening game of cat and mouse, he’s stopped to consider that maybe she might not be just a villain in this.

“How do you know it’s something I’ve done, and not something I will do?”

—

Time travel’s a bitch.


	12. (2016-04-10) ficlet

Her life is ruined because of that damned pocket watch. No home, no family, not even a time to call her own.

But some of her best memories are because of that watch, so she can’t truly regret it.

—

There is a bridge. It is a perilous thing, people more prone to falling than crossing, but still it is a bridge all the same.

She crosses beneath, jumping back and forth from stone to stone across the river.

—

With a heavy thump, she drops to the floor, sitting against the wall in exhaustion. It is not the best place she’s ever stayed–the walls grimy and the corners of the room draped with cobwebs–it’s small and dirty and empty, but it will do until her watch takes her away.

It takes five months.

—

She waits: she’s gotten good at that. She’s also gotten good at hurrying and rushing around, but that is just the rhythm of her life now.

Running and stopping across time, a dance which she cannot hear the music to.

—

Maybe one day she’ll be done–though it’s far more likely she’ll die before that. But it’s a nice dream to have, when the nights are cold and the days stretch long.

Maybe one day she’ll get her life back.


	13. (2016-04-12) ficlet

The day she finally gains full control over her powers is the day she realizes she can never go home. After the immediate stab of despair steals the breath from her lungs, she is left with only complete resignation.

She no longer has a home.

—

She’s spent more of her life traveling than she lived in her original time. Or, at least, she thinks so.

All she has to judge by is the way her body ages, how many days she can recall living–and there is no telling how accurate that is.

—

“Don’t I get a phone call, at least?” she asks, needling at the officer the same way his presence always scratched away at her, “Do you even have phones still?”

He remains silent, so she skips to the heart of the matter, “Where is Bastian?”

—

She has watched her father die six times: the first was when she was just a normal teenager, before she inherited the watch and all the perils that came with it.

Instances two through five were a futile attempt to stop it or, at the very least, figure out what actually happened.

She’d rather forget the last time.

—

Somehow, Leanne is able to say her goodbyes to two people–though it is not as much a blessing as she would have originally thought.

Faye is an old woman, with grown children and grandchildren to call her own, but it is Leanne who sits at her bedside for her last breath.

Thunderbolt, a lone vigilante now, goes out in a bright explosion of energy that Leanne just barely escapes, crying her eyes out.


	14. Word Prompts (AA1): +

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> closely related to my other archive of miscellaneous ficlets set in Cadmium City, especially this [one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11365425/chapters/25495785)

It’s just basic arithmetic. If one death can save many, it’s logical to sacrifice the individual for the greater good.

Consider also this: two people and one of them must die. But one of them can save lives later down the road, whereas the other cannot.

Wouldn’t it make sense to choose the one who can save others? Exchange one death for another, since both cannot be saved.

If she can do this, if she can pull this off, then maybe the world won’t go to shit.

—

Right now, Leanne is approximately twenty seven years old and also exactly five years, three months, and eight days old.

Her older self is in Cadmium City, trying not to pass out as she helps Doctor Kaiza stitch her student’s organs back inside of his body, while her younger self is enjoying a relaxing breakfast with her grandparents in the town of Belleview.

Lucky brat.

“Oh god, I’m gonna hurl,” she groans–her older self, that is–behind the paper and elastic mask, trying not to move her gloved hands even though all of Brian’s blood has made everything very slippery.

“You better not, this is a sterile environment and I won’t have you ruining my surgery,” Kaiza scolds without looking up, a trail of neat black stitches following after her needle.

Leanne scowls, she wasn’t really going to, it’s an exaggeration, but she lets the matter drop. Instead, she aims a question at Brian, “Doesn’t this hurt? She didn’t use any anesthesia.”

He smiles, pale and shaky with bloodloss but amused nonetheless, “I have a high pain tolerance.”

—

In the eyes of society, the best thing for a metahuman vigilante to do is to have many children, raise them with strong moral values, and go around sacrificing their lives for the betterment of everyone else around them.

The second best thing is to die a martyr.

The superhero Griever never got the chance to do the former because he eventually ended up doing the latter before he ever got married.

But Leanne has never been a very good metahuman, much less a good metahuman vigilante, and in this instance she’s not going to let Brian be either.

—

Whenever she is shunted through time, the first thing she does is try to find a safe place. Whether the the trip is an hour or a month, it doesn’t hurt to have some kind of home base to work from and wait out her stupid pocket watch’s erratic decisions.

Of course, her stupid pocket watch is also very sadistic and likes to make such a notion as difficult as possible.

This time she lands in the middle of a battle that would be almost nostalgic were it not, well, a battle. It’s not her team, nor a villain she’s used to, but she lends her efforts in destroying the robots trying to stab the slower lingering civilians. She doesn’t scream when a massive wolf jumps over her and rips the head off of one such machine, wires still sparking at the end, nor does she quake when a seemingly ordinary young man punches his fist clean through two inches of steel.

No, it’s only after the fight–once the villain has been apprehended and the mass self destruct order activated–that she flinches: when the third member of this familiar-yet-not team lays a hand on a bleeding arm wound, and pulls away to reveal unbroken skin instead.

Alvin Chand she recognizes, both in his wolf form and his human form, though the version she met had more scars and gray hairs. Curtis Ives looks similar enough to his son–or perhaps its the other way around–that she isn’t at all surprised.

But this third man, the one who introduces himself as Brian Odell? Oh, she’s met him before, too.

When she was just a child, crying in a grocery store, and one of the stock boys helped her find her grandfather.

Not as one of the members of her vigilante team’s predecessor.

Who are you, she thinks, as Doctor Kaiza–almost annoyingly familiar to her–herds the team into the clinic. Why have I never heard of you before, she wonders.

—

Here’s the problem: as far as she knows, she can’t actually change anything.

Oh little things, sure, the kind of minor tweaks and rewrites that changes a punch to the cheek into a dodge and counterattack. The only reason why she was chosen for the team as a teenager in the first place–the only ability her pocket watch had at the time, or seemed to have, anyway. But she’s never been able to change anything major before.

That’s not going to stop her from trying.


	15. (2016-06-05) ficlet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> directly related to [Chapter 19](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11365425/chapters/25520574) and [Chapter 20](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11365425/chapters/25520649) from Cadmium City, The Miscellaneous Archive

Her first words from him were “I loved you.”

His, from her, were “Give me back my watch.”

These instances were millennia apart.

So the miscommunication in their relationship? Completely understandable.

—

Counterclockwise (the Analogue Not Digital remix)

Or, Bastian’s side of the story.

Alternatively, one person’s sci-fi mystery is another person’s romantic drama.

—

When two leaders collaborate, inevitably they will clash. Whether that leads to a splintered alliance or an adjusted hierarchy depends:

Mostly, on how desperately they need each other.

—

A king may have an army, but armies need a general.

It’s a tenuous balance between legend and loyalty, between royalty and history, His Majesty and Boss. But the twins make it work.

—

“Pick your battles wisely,” the doctor had said, advice as enigmatic and inapplicable as ever.

But she had meant it with good intentions; a warning too far out of time, like the fossils of sea creatures in ancient deserts. Shapes without names.

—

Under the blanket, curled in a corner, she sits. Waiting for sleep to befall her. The sun shines bright as her eyelids weigh down.

She has travelled three days–two hundred years–without rest.

—

“You don’t even know me,” she says, but she does not leave and surely that must mean something.

“I know enough,” he responds. I know more about you than I do anyone or anything else in the world, he doesn’t say.

—

Of the six times she watched her father die, she only spoke to him twice. Her third go around of this tragedy she had appeared only a block away and ran as fast as she could to the intersection of Orchard and Burgundy.

He spotted her, and maybe even seemed to recognize her; his teenaged daughter suddenly a decade older, screaming at him to get down.

It’s not until the sixth time does she realize he was looking beyond that.

—

“I’ll take that army now,” Bastian says, grin wide, eyes wild–eager to begin again.

“Patience,” Maroon chides, even as she begins contacting the members of her crew. “You can’t rush perfection.”


	16. (2016-06-14) ficlet

“Don’t try to be a hero,” Henry said to her once. What is, perhaps, most surprising about it isn’t that he told her this as Henry, rather than his usual Starling demeanor, but that she had learned to tell the difference between the two.

“What?” She had asked, so oblivious then, yet so unwilling to take the advice given to her. This, however, she had listened to even if she hadn’t fully understood it at the time.

“It’s something my mentor Firefly told me, when I first began training,” he explained, as best he could. Someone trained into this life from childhood trying to communicate with a near-civilian, their backgrounds so different. “Our purpose isn’t about being a hero, it’s about surviving what other people can’t. Not because we’re invulnerable, but because we can outsmart whatever is thrown our way.”

He smiled then and Leanne thought–or will one day think–that it may have been the first time he ever smiled at her. And it may be the only time he ever did.

For that moment, he wasn’t the perfect prodigy student of a legendary vigilante and she some random bystander unwittingly blundering onto the team. For that moment, they were–not equals, exactly, but similar. Empathetic.

Like he said, they weren’t invulnerable; didn’t have accelerated healing rates or full-body energy shields. They were both human, trying to survive on a team of powerhouses and meta-humans.

It’s not about being a hero, he had said, it’s about survival.

She wouldn’t fully understand it until after she had stopped being the former, and had been consumed by the latter.

—

Caleb had been kind to her, when Leanne was first starting out, mostly because he was the most sympathetic to her. Not because they were in any way alike, but because they were so different as to nearly be opposite. And they both knew it.

He was almost literally born to the life of a vigilante: his father had been one and he, along with Caleb’s step-mother, had raised him to be, if not a vigilante himself, then very aware of the lifestyle and what it meant to society. It also didn’t hurt that he was a meta-human from birth–invulnerable, with enhanced senses and strength.

He grew up expecting that he would one day step into his parents’ world, had been preparing for it his whole life, it would seem. Knew the ups and downs of it, but had deemed it–not an obligation, something to be taken up as part of his family’s legacy–but rather a responsibility. Something that he, with his abilities, had a duty to use on behalf of those less fortunate.

Which is perhaps the mindset that he had with her all along. A little unflattering, but probable: it’s not like he had ever been swept up by a random doctor and thrown onto a team with strangers without warning. She had far less knowledge, experience, and capability than him and everyone knew it. But rather than acting superior–though he was, in fact, in all senses of the term–he had tried his best to reach out and help her.

Too bad she had been too stubborn to accept it until it was too late.

—

Tetsuki? Oh, now, there’s a story that’s hardly worth the telling.

They were like fire and ice, oil and water, cats and dogs; as incompatible as all the cliché sayings one could think of. They were two gears asked to work together, but one was for a clock the other an engine, and all of their teeth merely scratched and jammed rather than clicked in synch.

After time and experience and many failed attempts–mistiming and miscommunication and some embarrassing crashes sprinkled about–they would learn to, if not read each other, then at the very least predict each other’s actions. They were functional, at least, if not compatible.

They never would be friends, but they had been teammates and that meant something more.

—

Hari is the one who she had been most uncertain about–mostly because he had seemed so uncertain of her in turn. Almost… scared of her, occasionally, which seemed so ludicrous at the time because what could she possibly do to a four hundred pound adolescent lion with the claws and teeth to match when the only thing she had was a wonky pocket watch?

Of course, it took her about ten years–in both directions, coincidentally enough–to realize that it was because her first time meeting him? Was definitely not his first time meeting her.

“There, there, it’s okay. I’m here, Hari, I’m here,” she murmured to the side of a familiar little boy’s head, crouched down so he could wrap his skinny arms around her neck. It was soothing nonsense, she didn’t think her presence could actually make this situation acceptable. He answered her with a sob, but tried his best to muffle it into her shoulder, the fabric of her top already becoming damp with his tears.

The police officers swarming around the scene barely sent a glance her way, most likely too focused documenting the evidence and preventing a crowd to worry about a woman who had managed to calm the only survivor. Or, perhaps, they knew her.

One of the older detectives looked familiar, like the relative of someone she had met previously; or the same person aged several years. After all, she had a brief stint as the fourth member of a vigilante team before her watch had whisked her away. For once it had been fairly chronological, if not entirely continuous: after four months of fighting alongside Apex, Griever, and Silverfang, she had disappeared only to reappear about two years later, a block away from where she was now.

Hari’s crying was tapering off, it seemed, though he wouldn’t relinquish his hold on her. “Shall I carry you, then?” she asked him, and did so when he slowly nodded in return; his short hair ticklish against her cheek.

“Anachron,” the familiar looking detective called to her once she stood, waving her over to join him. It seemed so strange, having people in the past know her by the name she had yet to take up. She hadn’t thought to come up with a new vigilante codename–it had taken her long enough to decide on that one, let alone a second one.

… Although, that would explain why everyone ‘in the industry’ so to speak had looked at her oddly when she announced her choice. To them, it had probably seemed like she had just taken some outdated minor hero’s name and tried to pass it off as her own. Then again, Hari had been rather supportive of her choice so maybe he had known all along.

Considering the weight in her arms, it’s a sound theory.

“Yes, detective?” she prompted, once she got close enough not to need to shout across the crime scene.

“It’s good to see you again, even if under shitty circumstances,” he said, a small smile twitched beneath his mustache, “Thought you had gone for good.”

“So did I,” she said, with a shrug, or as much of one she could manage with a child wrapped around her torso.

The detective nodded, before sobering up, “This is a fucking nightmare, though. The kid shouldn’t have to stay. I know some of the rookies are going to have trouble sleeping tonight.”

Leanne nodded, unsure what else to do.

“Could you keep an eye on him? He seems to like you well enough, and if he is what I think he is, none of my officers will be able to handle him if he acts up.”

She could feel her mouth flatten into a displeased frown. For all that the intent was good, his word choice could be improved, “What do you think he is?” she asked instead of correcting him.

The detective’s own mouth twisted into a frown for a different reason. He gestured at the crime scene, barely visible through it’s partition of yellow tape and police officers. At the other children, less lucky than Hari, with iridescent red scales or feathery wings or even, she noted with a shudder, with skin the same waxy green of leaves.

Some sick bastard building a menagerie of meta-human children. And while, for now, Hari maintained his human form, it wouldn’t be hard to infer the reason behind his presence.

After the pointed silence, she decided, “I’ll bring him to Kaiza’s. He ought to be checked out by a doctor, anyway.” While she doubted she’d up and disappear so soon after a jump, it’d be better if she set up alternate supervision just in case.

“I’ll let Social Services know,” the detective agreed, before dismissing himself and heading back into the fray.

As she walked away, undeterred by officers beyond a few cautious gazes, she heard Hari mumble quietly, “Anachron?”

It’s the first word he said since she found him, surrounded by corpses and uniforms, not a kindness in sight. She gave herself a moment to compose herself.

“Yes, it’s my codename. The one the police use so I don’t have to tell them my real one,” she explained.

“So the real one is a secret, so the bad people don’t find you,” Hari responded and she could feel her heart breaking.

She smoothed a hand up and down his back, the thin material of his shirt soft from being so threadbare. “Yes, something like that.”

He pulled away from her then, but only enough to look her in the eyes. “What’s your real name, then? You already know mine.”

She smiled at him then, tight and painful, and hoped he wouldn’t notice the difference, “You can call me Ann.”


	17. Word Prompts (S63): Sorrow

A pocket watch flies through the air: the metal simple, shining silver, the edges dinged slightly, the chain trailing like a comet’s tail. It hits the wall with little fuss, nothing breaks, maybe a new dent.

She wants to scream.

Except no one is around to hear–this city is an empty shell, concrete, metal, glass and weeds through the cracks–so she follows through.

“Haven’t you taken enough from me?” Leanne screams, the answering silence roaring in her ears.

“I’ve seen too much, I’ve lost too much!”

She walks over to her fallen watch, kneels in front of it, desperate and gone mad.

“Please, please,” she says.

Just leave me alone, she doesn’t.

—

Odell… she’s heard the name before. But not in this context. Not as Brian Odell, real name of vigilante Griever, but somewhere else.

Someone else.

“Yasmine,” she breathes, the connection finally made, lightning running through the wires of her brain.

Yasmine Odell, one of the members of the short lived Team Spectra. The doctor. Or, alternatively, the assassin.

Leanne has a scar on her shoulder from one of Yasmine’s scalpels–she’s lucky she got away with only that, though mostly that’s because it was an accident. They had surprised each other.

Yasmine had been equally understanding about the broken nose.

By Yasmine’s first birthday, she had been an orphan.

—

Faye remembers her sister uncannily well, considering they only had a little over a decade together and Faye lived to see fourteen of them.

Guilt and rage and hope do that to a person’s memory.

So when Leanne appears, looking all of twenty five, Faye can confidently say, “You’ve gotten old.”

Her sister disappeared at nineteen; had shorter hair and far less scars. Didn’t nearly cry so easily, either.

“So have you,” the brat chokes out, taking the seat by Faye’s bedside without permission.

“That’s what over a century of living does to you,” Faye retorts, before generously acquiescing, “You can hold my hand if you like.”

For a moment, she’s afraid Leanne won’t take it. She doesn’t know why–Leanne’s never been intentionally cruel.

Leanne’s hand is so careful to curl around her own, for once Faye the softer and frailer one.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” Leanne says, around ugly tears, nose stuffed up.

“Shut up and tell me what you’ve been doing,” Faye says instead of indulging a pity-party.

It’s as if she’s a teenager again; Faye falls asleep to the sound of her older sister’s voice.

She doesn’t wake up.


	18. (2016-08-04) ficlet

“It’s not as if I wanted to leave,” she says, low and quiet, not wanting to disturb the stillness of the room.

Gently, she sets three fingertips against the bare skin of Alphie’s shoulder, who has yet to look at her, lying on his stomach and face turned away into his pillow.

For some reason, he too, doesn’t want to disturb this fragile quiet, he doesn’t jerk away from her touch, merely squirms until she pulls back.

“I wanted to come back sooner,” she continues, because Alphie has yet respond, “I would have, if I could.”

Still, Alphie says nothing. Maybe he wants her to beg, maybe he wants to punish her.

“Don’t–don’t do this, please,” she says, tone turning rough–irritation or desperation?

Or maybe he just wants to hear her voice again–it’s been six years, after all.

She sighs. Even without looking, Alphie can feel the weight of her hesitant seat on the side of the bed moving. Shifting, as if to stand up and go.

Blindly, he reaches his arm towards her, palm up and open. He turns his head to face her, jaw still pressed into the pillow. Still silent.

Don’t leave me, he doesn’t say. Don’t leave me again.

—

There’s a delicate art to simultaneously being a mercenary for hire, an on-call member of a vigilante team, and a parent, but the simplest method is:

Don’t.

Just give up one of them.

It’s okay to half-ass two things, but third-assing three things is just asking for failure.

Really.

At the very least, schedule the hell out of everything you do, and for god’s sake DO NOT HAVE OVERLAPPING OBLIGATIONS.

Otherwise you’ll end up being hired to fight your own team in the rafters of the school auditorium where your child is acting as Guard #2 in his school play.

And that’s not even the worse time she’s been triple-booked.

—

The time traveling bit is Doctor Kaiza’s fault.

And Anachron’s, obviously, given that it’s Anachron’s power and all, but Diana still blames Doctor Kaiza for the most part. Anachron is more of a fellow victim in this whole thing.

“Shit!” she screams, picks up a worn and faded floral monstrosity of a couch, and chucks it into the charred wall.

Anachron tries very hard to make herself a smaller target.

“Goddamn. Fucking. Shit!” Diana shouts again, grabs the behemoth of a television set with it’s cracked screen and warped frame and throws that as well. The cables show metal through the melted rubber casing, trailing like a comet’s tails.

Find Anachron. Catch her. Take her watch.

It doesn’t matter if Doctor Kaiza meant it with good intentions–hoping to restore Anachron to her proper time or at the very least stop her endless journey–she still sent Diana on an impossible quest and hadn’t warned her of the possible risks.

“When are we?” she asks, near to a growl. Anachron doesn’t flinch, but her fingers shake noticeably as she reaches for the grimy, soot-stained window.

A few moment’s haphazard cleaning gives a decent enough view to the outside world.

Sky nearly orange, but no sunset in sight; neighboring buildings as destroyed and burned as the one they’re in.

It’s not very promising.


	19. The Adventures of Jack and Ness ficlet (2016-08-05)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Adventures of Jack and Ness are unrelated stories revolving around best friends in vastly different worlds and situations.
> 
> This time, they're in the Counterclockwise 'verse

Because he hiccups when he cries and says things like, ‘What if pigeons destroyed a country?’ and never, not even once, no matter how often he was asked, took the easy way out. Because he’s strange and and silly and noble and far too good at poker to be anything but an impeccable liar, despite his kindness, and that’s what she’s been looking for this entire time, apparently.

Ness looks him straight in his beautiful, brown eyes and says:

“I need you to help me fight an old woman.”

—

Faye Lin, neé Peridot, is downright evil and possibly a manifestation of planet Earth’s justifiable rage at humanity.

She also is the only signatory for a specific safety deposit box in a particular bank that holds the exact item that Ness needs in order to get paid and have enough money to do things like, say, pay rent and maybe eat at least once this week.

“Or, at least, something that isn’t instant noodles,” she says, before not so gracefully shoving another slice of pizza into her mouth.

Across the table from her, looking discomfited  by both her eating mannerisms and the mysteriously sticky red vinyl of the booth’s benches, Jack puts his own slice of pizza back down.

“And… you need me for this?” he asks. He glances around, as if to check no one is listening, to then continue their conversation of robbing an old lady. Hypothetically.

Ness shrugs, cheeks filled with the glorious tastes of cheese and tomato or, at least, a very delicious approximation of both. “She knows what I look like, and she’s made it pretty clear that if I ever approach her again on the matter of the safety deposit box she’s going to kick my ass.”

“You talked to her about it?” Jack asks, all unimpressed incredulity as if he were the expert in acquisitions and she the new recruit.

“Duh,” she says, roll of her eyes quick and fleeting and more like a sideways check of the exits, “I had to.” She pauses, purses her lips, and admits with a sigh, “She’s my grandmother.”


	20. Word Prompts (R21): Religious

Time and space and matter and energy. The foundation of existence, the code of the universe. If you can crack them, control them, change them–even just one–you can create miracles.

You can be a god. Even, apparently, by accident.

An old argument, meant to prove the existence of God: the watchmaker analogy, meant to liken the complex workings of the universe to a watch, and posit that such complexity must be a result of intelligent design. And for something to be intelligently designed, there must be a designer–a watchmaker–behind it.

Philosophers probably never thought it would be about a literal watch.

And they probably had higher expectations for the watchmaker.


	21. Word Prompts (W41): Worry

On her last day in Belleview, she is given three gifts:

From the woman who would one day be her grandmother, she gets a coat. Sturdy leather, satin lining, enough pockets for an entire convenience store. Or an armory.

From the man who would one day be her grandfather, she gets a a key. It is small and easily loops on a chain. The lock it is for has not been made yet.

From the woman who set her on this path–forwards and backwards and against the flow of time–she gets a promise. Doctor Kaiza’s door will always be open to her.

—

Victor has two younger sisters.

Had.

Victor had two younger sisters, and he will never forgive himself for not taking care of Leanne when she was around.

When he was a child–a toddler, really–his mother gave birth to Leanne. Even before that, during the pregnancy, he was happy about it. He was looking forward to a younger sister. Or so his mother recounts.

There’s a picture of the three of them–his mother tired but happy, Victor absolutely enamored, Leanne red-faced and alive in his small arms–all three of them on the bed.

In less than a year, he doesn’t know why, Leanne was sent to live with his grandparents.

He forgot about her when Faye was born another two years later.

Leanne came back, after their grandparents passed away, but by then he was eleven and no longer enamored by younger sisters.

Another ten years later, she disappeared again. This time, never to return.

—

Tetsuki knows she’ll die doing this job, only because she’s so goddamned good at it that she’ll never stop until death makes her.

If her aunt–great great great many more times great aunt–is a mountain or a glacier, immutable and immortal, then Tetsuki is an explosion, the strike of lightning, a supernova.

All of her energy used in a brief, blinding lifetime rather than stretched out for all eternity.

That sounds better than being lost to time, slipping through fingers, through memories, transient.

Saving lives, fighting crime, that’s all Tetsuki wants–Anachron isn’t suited to be a vigilante.


	22. (2017-03-25) ficlet

“Hey!” she screams up at the sky, empty and silent and useless, “How long are you going to wait? Haven’t I done enough?”

There is nothing around her, nothing for the sound to bounce back, no echoes just her voice lost to eternity.

She’s reached a new low. Now she does not want an ending. She needs it. And she’s demanding it.

She doesn’t know if there is a god up there, one who will smite her for her hubris or will take pity on her. She’s met people with fantastic powers, people with immortality, people with both. She’s met beings who go by the terms angels and demons. She’s met spirits of long passed people, spirits of ideas, spirits of natural formations. Once, she met a spirit of red crayons who gave her a surprisingly legitimate treasure map after she did it a great service.

But she’s never met a god.

She thinks, if she ever does, she’s going to punch it in its face.

She’s become riskier over the years. Vicious and flippant and aggressive over the eons. Once, she was just some civilian who thought fighting was the arguments she had with her siblings over whose turn it was to do the dishes.

Now she runs headfirst into battles, brushing past a literal invulnerable man and sneering, “Why are you hesitating? What’s the worst that can happen? We’ll die?”

Once, meeting Apex had brought stars to her eyes. Had reaffirmed her confidence that maybe she could one day be hero, too.

Now she is the team’s walking time bomb, all shrapnel and fire and incandescent rage, even he is afraid to follow where she goes.

Sometimes, she wonders, if he had just said something then–years in the future for him, but ages in the past for her–if he had warned her away, would anything have changed?

All these what ifs, more heady and seductive with the growing power in her palm, like coins rattling in a jar, or gleaming at the bottom of a fountain. What if she could just pluck them up and hold them to the sun and wish?

How much more does she need? What is the quota? Or maybe, she thinks, there is none. There is no mystical, mysterious finish line that she needs to cross. There is no time card to punch out, no hours to dock, no sick days or annual bonuses. Seasons barely mean anything to her, she doesn’t know when her last birthday was. She’s beginning to forget what her family looked like.

No wonder Bastian was so mad when they first met: she’s finally on her way to joining him.


	23. a softer ficlet (2017-05-01)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part of the [a softer ask box](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11406585) event

[ _I don’t know how to make things right._ ](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=989)  
[ _So I’ll just keep pretending_ ](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=989)  
[ _that nothing’s wrong._ ](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=989)  
[ _(you know that I’m no good)_ ](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=989)

—

Ellen meets her two years into her stint of immortality on, of all things, a dark and stormy night. She’s slumped against the back door of Ellen’s small clinic, bleeding out and soaked and unconscious.

Perturbed, Ellen rushes over and feels for a pulse. She is a doctor first and foremost–it defines her above and beyond the curse that will plague her forever (and it’ll be a few decades before she becomes the leader in meta-human physiology)–the cardinal rule guides her still.

A steady rhythm, if weak and beneath cold clammy skin, but not for long with that wound.

The woman startles at the touch, eyes blearily blinking open and taking in Ellen’s face.

“You’ll be okay,” Ellen reassures her, “I’m a doctor.”

“Kaiza,” the woman breathes out, “You cold hearted bitch,” before her eyes fall shut and she goes unconscious once more.

It’s not exactly the smoothest beginning.

Then again, Leanne would argue that this wasn’t the beginning at all.

///

Ellen adapts to her occasional visitor the way a cat might become accustomed to a coyote that hangs around the opposite side of the backyard fence. Which is to say, poorly.

Better than cats and dogs, but not by much.

Later, she will have more than her fill of cat and dog jokes–jaguars and wolves as cooperative as their domesticated counterparts–herding a group of overly dramatic young adults with more power than sense, but for now they have not been spoiled for her yet.

Much, much later she will do it again and wonder why she didn’t learn, but that is for another time.

Everything, it seems, about Leanne is for another time.

For now it is just her and her clinic and her strangely hostile, but helpful guest.

“You won’t want to open that without Nyx,” Leanne says, hand overtop hers, keeping the aged grimoire shut.

Ellen pauses, asks, “Who is Nyx?”

Leanne raises an eyebrow, almost disbelieving, “She’s a devil’s advocate. The best and one of the least cutthroat at that, though you shouldn’t say as such to her face.”

“And I should ask her for help?”

The expression on Leanne’s face would make that a resounding, “No, are you kidding? She’ll eat you alive. And then swindle your soul out from under you.” She looks frankly perplexed, as if this is something Ellen should already know. “You have to make a deal with her, trade something she might want.”

Ellen considers, looks around. She doesn’t have much–she hasn’t lived long enough for her immortality to benefit her; the reason why she even has the grimoire in the first place is because one of her atypical patients gave it to her as payment–unless this Nyx might need medical services?

Leanne laughs, amused by the very idea, before humming, pondering, “Nyx won’t, she’s a demon, but she did have a daughter… Or, she will have one?” Leanne laughs again, “Well, I’m sure you’ll find out eventually.”

///

By the time Leanne meets her for the first time, she no longer thinks of herself as Ellen. She is Kaiza: a doctor, an immortal, and a cold hearted bitch.

She is sitting across the table from a woman with familiar features wrought in an unfamiliar expression. Kaiza has seen Leanne with resignation on her face, but not mixed with fear and fierce yet futile protectiveness. Then again, Leanne never was a mother–never will be, from what she knows of her–and the woman in front of Kaiza is a mother to three.

A mother who has been told she will lose one of her children.

“Not again,” says Leanne’s mother, hands over her face, “I can’t do this again.”

Kaiza lets her come to terms in silence, there’s nothing she can say to make this situation better.

Outside the house she hears a car pulling up, the sound of young voices talking and the slamming of doors. “Mom!” shouts the highest voice, the youngest child. Not Leanne. “We totally owned the other team, eleven to three, and I made four of the goals…”

She drifts into silence at the presence of a stranger in their house. A few steps behind the child are her older siblings, all of them with the same leafy green hair as their mother. Leanne looks so young. So painfully unknowing.

Kaiza is going to ruin her, just as cold hearted as Leanne once accused her of being

“Victor,” says Leanne’s mother, “take Faye upstairs.”

“Wha–but, Mom!” says the little girl, pulling shrugging off her brother’s hand, “What about Leanne?”

“Upstairs!” she snaps, before gentling herself, “Now, please.”

The boy guides his youngest sister, cowed and silent, leaving Leanne standing by herself.

Ah. So that’s what she looks like when she’s afraid.


	24. Ask Box Would You Ever ficlet (2018-02-20), anonymous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part of the [Ask Box Would You Ever event](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13860777/chapters/31884900), from the perspective of an inanimate object

Watch. Wait. Ever present, eternal.

Today I am created, but I have always existed.

I am infinite and reaching.

The one who will wield me does not yet live. She is the one who designed me.

I will wait. I am already with her.

///

The woman who makes me does not truly understand what it is she is creating.

She has seen me before, but does not know the power that lies within. She thinks me only as metal and glass.

My face is shining, my hands are steady. The gears within my body run smoothly.

I am well crafted. Were I able to speak, I would tell her so. But I cannot.

The woman who makes me will not wield me, but she is skilled and her hands are sure.

My wielder will have the same sure hands.

///

There is a chain.

There is a box lined with velvet.

There is a cold, locked room deep underground.

Silence.

I need not be patient.

She will come for me soon.

///

The woman who made me brings with her a boy. Her child.

Neither of them are my wielders.

But they come to the cold, locked room deep underground.

They open the box line with velvet.

They look upon me and the chain that binds me.

The woman who made me tells her son that I am a secret.

A legacy.

To be passed down until the time is right.

If I could laugh, I would.

///

Generations pass.

The line of the woman who made me visit only to show me to their children, onward and onward.

None of them are my wielder.

Soon.

///

Once, a group of masked thieves enter the locked room deep underground.

They begin to open the other boxes, Empty riches into their bags.

Useless material things.

They are stopped before they reach me.

My wielder is there. She glances my way.

I do not skip a beat.

She looks away.

No need. I am already with her.

///

A woman brings her son to see me.

This boy will die. Not in the way that all of their line die–as a simple matter of age and time. This boy will be killed.

My wielder will be the one to kill him.

Soon.

///

The boy who will be killed by my wielder has grown into a man. He brings with him his own child, a daughter.

My wielder.

But not yet.

The man will die. My wielder will come for me. Then she will kill him.

It is too early.

///

I have already told you what I am.


End file.
